Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Let me say one other thing. I would like to close this--thank you all for your participation, and thank all…”

“Thank you. Let me say one other thing. I would like to close this--thank you all for your participation, and thank all of you--but I would like to close by putting this issue even in a larger context if I might, just to close. To me, having an accurate census is a big part of having a strategy for racial reconciliation in America and building one American community that works. Why? Because if people feel they're undercounted, and they don't get--their children don't get the help they need, whether it's an education or health care or whatever--it will breed, inevitably, a sense of resentment, a sense of unfairness, a sense that people aren't really part of the mainstream and the future. And this is really important. I know a lot of people think I'm obsessed with this, but I think the fact that we are growing more diverse as the world gets smaller is an enormous, enormous asset for the United States in the 21st century if we really live together on terms of the quality and harmony and cooperation--and if we're growing together, not being split apart. But if you look at what I have to spend my time doing as your President when I deal with countries around the world, how much of it is dealing with people who are burdened down with group resentments? Why were we all rejoicing when the Irish voted for the peace accord? Because the Catholics and the Protestants had given up their group resentment to work together for a unified future. What is the problem in Kosovo, a place that most Americans had never heard of before a few months ago? Ethnic Albanians and Serbs fighting over group resentments. What was Bosnia about? The same thing. What is going on in the Middle East? What is the dynamic within India now? It's just all in the news because of the nuclear test, where you have a Hindu party claiming that the Hindus historically have been insufficiently respected and oppressed by the Muslim minority, and you have group resentments. I mean, this whole world is so full of people's resentments because they think that the group they're a part of is not getting a fair deal from everybody else if they happen to be bigger or richer or whatever. We have--with all of our problems in America--we have slowly, steadily, surely been able to chip away at all of the those barriers and come together. That, in the end, may be the largest issue of all about the census: Can we succeed in building one America without knowing who we are, how many we are, where we are, and what kind of situation we're living in? I think the answer to that is, it will be a lot harder. And if we do it right, we'll be a lot stronger. Thank you all, and God bless you.”